Publishers have legitimate business and legal concerns regarding digital content lending systems. Unlike paper copies of their book content, copies of digital content are relatively easy to make and very easy to distribute. To meet business concerns, publishers require that a lending system ensures that only one user at a time has access to the ebook content purchased by a user. To meet legal concerns, publishers require that a lending system does not permit the duplication of multiple copies of ebook content in violation of copyright law.
There are library-based lending systems in use that allow an ebook to be lent from a library to a patron of the library (see for example the ebook lending system at the New York Public Library (ebooks.nypl.org)). A library-based lending system is not a consumer-to-consumer lending system and differs in several significant regards. In a library lending system, a library patron submits a request to the library for a book contained in the library. The requests for books are always between patrons and the library system itself. There is no lending between patrons of the library system. Current library-based lending systems do not have the technical capability to facilitate a lending process directly between one user and another user.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,901,386 describes a system by which corporations or other entities can manage their licenses to electronic assets, e.g., software. As is well known, software licenses, particularly licenses to enterprise software, can be very expensive. Corporations are therefore always looking for ways to maximize the use of their licenses across the organization. In the system described in this patent, the owner of a current license to an electronic asset “releases” its license to the license management system. This released license can be re-assigned other users in the organization.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,054,840 describes a clearinghouse for rights in digital material. If a user decides to sell or otherwise transfer her rights to some digital material, she transfers her rights to a clearinghouse server which posts the digital material as being for sale or other transfer. When a buyer or borrower sees the posting, he can buy or borrow the material through the clearinghouse.
U.S. Patent Publication US 2006/10543134 describes a licensing system in which a request for a license is received either directly from a borrower or indirectly through a licensing authority.
None of these systems of the prior art describe a consumer to consumer lending system that provides the technical safeguards required by authors and publishers to ensure unauthorized copies are not made. Further none of them teach a system in which a user's electronically stored contacts facilitate the lending and borrowing of digital content.